The House of David

Monday, April 28, 2003

The agony of victory

Because I am a lazy blogger, tonight I will just be reacting to Andrew Sullivan and then going to sleep. (I'd earlier written a comment to Cap'n Rational, so go ahead and read that if you want variety.)

Sully has a full length article, pondering whether the Republicans are suffering from the agony of victory. His examples are Gingrich and Santorum. They are not examples I would use.

Personally, I can ignore Gingrich; everyone knows he is a bomb-throwing loudmouth who doesn't speak for anyone but himself. Plus if the State Department is shaken up a little, I can live with that (I mean, their Arabists were wrong, weren't they? if I wanted naïve and ignorant buffoons to represent me abroad, I'd do it myself).

And, sorry to disappoint Sully here, but Santorum's outburst reveals a mind too confused to be a threat to gays and/or privacy. On the one hand, he said some stupid stuff that more mainstream members of his party should unsay ASAP (Cheney would be good for this). But on the other hand, consensual sex does have a fringe - it's called S&M, and you do have to worry about public health issues.

I worry about attempts to overturn the First Amendment. I worry about profligate public spending. I worry about the administration not scaring the bejeebers out of the world's tyrants. This is what the Republicans need to be on guard against - because if they end up looking like ineffectual corporate fascists, especially after the year is out, the disappointment factor will set in. And the Bush family knows all about that.

posted by Zimri on 03:21 | link |

King George?

Okay, I know I shouldn't blog anymore when I have better projects going on, and it's 3 AM, but I can't resist this one...

Andrew Sullivan notes a case where a Mr Bursey is facing six months in prison because he protested the war in Iraq.

On the one hand, the content of Mr Bursey's sign was slanderous. Oil wasn't the motive for the war; it was the motive for those who opposed the war (namely, the French, and anyone else currently holding a worthless contract with Saddam's initials on it). That Bursey chose to protest the war on those grounds tells me that he doesn't need to be debated so much as sedated.

But on the other hand, "free speech" zones that start a half mile from the speaker are just bullshit. And there are cases to be made against this administration. Maybe "!END FARM SUBSIDIES NOW! OVERTURN THE CORPORATE TROUGH". Or even "KEEP YOUR NOSE CLEAN, YOU HYPOCRITE; STOP THE DRUG WAR". I could think of dozens more.

What is going on is simple: the Secret Service has decided that George W Bush is, as of now, indispensible. To answer Sullivan's (admittedly rhetorical) question: yes, the man is now a "monarch". His well-being is being equated with the well-being of the nation. We peasants cannot be allowed to unsettle his delicate frame of mind.

Fie on that, I say. The Democrats need to raise a stink about this. The first thing they should do, is to order Dick Gephardt or some other powerful legislator to clarify that "seldom-used statute" (they always seem to be the worst of the statutes, don't they? like "double-secret probation") so it cannot be abused in such a manner. And the Secret Service ought to drop charges and apologise.

posted by Zimri on 02:48 | link |

A year in the making

I have a new project up. But before I can tell you what it is, I need to go on one of my infamous tangents. Please bear with me a moment...

Over a year ago, I acquired an expanded translation of the Qur'an and set to reading parts of it. Ever since 9/11 I'd planned to do to the Qur'an and Islamic history what I'd been doing to the Bible and Jewish-Christian history since 1998 or 1995 or so. (My motive was and is not "to destroy Islam"; I am instead motivated by a desire to find out what Islam is.) But until very recently I'd been stymied by an ignorance of Arabic and of Islamic history.

Anyway, last April I decided I'd start out with a survey of surahs 15-20. I quickly found, as had many before me, that these surahs were full of quotations from a set selection of Jewish-Christian writings. This tied in to what I'd heard on the Internet, that someone had claimed to have found an "Arabic Christian anti-trinitarian hymnody" underlying a third the Qur'an. I wondered if some of that may have ended up in surahs 15-20, so I went hunting.

Immediately I found that sura 16 shared a number of parallel verses with sura 23 that, in synopsis, appear to agree on a common theme of Allah's gifts to mankind. In particular there was one phrase, "surely in the cow there is a lesson for you", which no-one could call coincidence. But then I got bogged down looking for other parallels to this, and I could not even show if these "parallels" would still be parallel in their native language. So I gave up on that, and on Islamic research in general, and decided to take up blogging instead (heh).

Since this February, I've improved my skills, I've learnt more, I've found and posted some non-Arabic source material, and I've even downloaded a transcription of the Qur'an into Roman characters. Most recently I've come up with a theory of the Qur'an's order of publication, which now includes sura 16 (80-90 AH) and sura 23 (90-100 AH).

Now, finally, I've been able to go back to the 16 // 23 parallels and decide which sura used which. And I'm pleased to report my instincts were correct: these suras aren't quoting each other. They are instead quoting something else - a hymn to the Creator. Pace Gunther Lüling, this isn't necessarily Christian nor anti-trinitarian, although such a Christian would not have taken offence at it. But I'll leave that much for the project itself.

I have learnt many a lesson from The Lesson of the Cow already, and I do hope this improves the state of the question, in some small way.

posted by Zimri on 00:58 | link |

Monday, April 21, 2003

"Proper Site"

Here you go. It's just an index for now.

Also, here's something on sura 16. I doubled the size of the 43 page to take it into account; the latter turns out to have implications for feminists as well as for Christians.

posted by Zimri on 19:08 | link |

Thursday, April 10, 2003

Recap

At some point I need to design a proper site for all these projects... but until then, I have an introduction to start you off.

Now for the new...

This is a short project for a short sura - the sura 19-sized 43. At last, I can post an end limit on sura 19. Sura 43 also has implications for Islamic Christology. Still not much about Muhammad in there, though.

This one looks at sura 5; a "second generation sura" that I can't pinpoint too well, but it's probably based on the Dome of the Rock.

This one looks at sura 4. I think the Dome used it as well as sura 3. One cunning little sneak in a later, more Mohammedan age tried to write a sura just like it; it's sura 33 (which is interesting in its own right, as the one that contained the "Verse of Stoning" - look it up on Google).

posted by Zimri on 20:03 | link |

The Dem scramble begins

From the Drudge Report:

DEM HOUSE LEADER PELOSI TOLD REPORTERS THURSDAY: 'I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO REGRET ABOUT MY VOTE [AGAINST] THIS WAR. THE SAME QUESTIONS REMAIN. THE COST IN HUMAN LIVES, THE COST TO OUR BUDGET, PROBABLY 100 BILLION. WE COULD HAVE PROBABLY BROUGHT DOWN THAT STATUE FOR A LOT LESS'...

When an accounting of the civilian lives lost is made, I predict we will find that they were considerably less than those lost in the bombing of 1991. It will certainly be less than the lives lost "due to sanctions", i.e. due to Saddam killing people and blaming it on us. We did however kill a lot of Ba'athist thugs and Syrian terrorists this time around, and although Pelosi may mourn them I shall not.

As far as money's concerned, we'll recoup that when the lower oil prices come in, now that we can undercut OPEC, Mexico, and Chavez. Besides, this year I actually enjoyed paying my taxes. If the deficit is a problem, and I'd argue it is, then let's go after corporate welfare like the steel tariffs and farm subsidies.

I was by no means gung-ho about this war, when it looked like we were actually going to do it (see here). But now that I've seen how well it was waged, I am proud, so proud of my country, my army, and - hell - even my politicians.

Pelosi's alternative would have been... what exactly? I think we know: precisely nothing, while carping at the President for political advantage. She needs to sign this, but she won't, because she's not honest.

She can't think the voters will actually fall for that old "I coulda dunnit better" BS. If that is going to be the party line, the Democrats are facing a nadir they haven't seen since the Civil War (come to that, someone remind me what side that party supported in 1860-4? maybe I'll surf Google for the answer).

posted by Zimri on 19:40 | link |

Wednesday, April 02, 2003

Happy anniversary for me

Yes, yes, I've been at it a whole year. I'd say more but I'm sick right now, bleah.

posted by Zimri on 19:38 | link |